My day in Pre-K

Today I was the classroom volunteer for Ellie's pre-k class. Usually this is just for an hour and a half, but Ellie wanted me to go to all school chapel with her as well, so I decided that I would just spend the whole morning with her in pre-k. It was a blast. She was so excited for me to go to school with her. The first thing that we did when we got there was to put our bags and coats in big trash bags to protect them from lice. We then got in line to walk over to all school chapel. This was quite a production because on all school chapel days the kids are supposed to be at school 5 minutes earlier so that they have time to walk over to the big church building. Of course this is easier said than done so as we made the walk to the church building we kept picking up stragglers. Once we got to chapel we met up with the kid's 5th grade buddies. Ellie's buddy is Megan. Megan's brother Matthew also happens to be in Ellie's class. Megan was so cute. She talked with Ellie and asked her all kinds of questions, and on the way back to the classroom played red light/green light with her. Ellie loves her. During chapel we talked about the book of Ezekial which the kids had all been studying in their smaller chapel groups throughout the week. We then sang "Dem Bones" with actions. The rest of the songs were sang by one of the students who couldn't have been older than 6th grade but had an awesome voice. The worship leaders also did the signs for all of the songs. It was an amazing service. After this, we walked back over to the classroom and read a story and had a lesson on head lice. Did I mention that I was itching by this point? We then played outside. It is so interesting to see the social interactions between these four and five year olds. Although for the most part boys and girls tend to stick together, there's definitely more interaction than I remember at this age. For example, alot of the boys were playing pirates, but they would occaisionally choose some girls to be their pirate wives. I'm not sure what I think about that. There was still alot of the running around in circles chasing each other that I do remember. We then went back inside and had center time. This is where the kids go to the different areas of the classroom (science, practical life, language, math, art) and do "work". This ranges from puzzles to computer work to blocks to art projects to writing. I'm amazed at how much these kids know in pre-k. Most of them are close to reading if not already. They can count, write numbers and do basic math. One group of kids was working on learning about the planets in our solar system. Another was learning the montessori shapes (by the way, mom doesn't even know all of these). It's pretty impressive. We then went back to circle time, read two Halloween books and then left for the day to have Mexican food with Grandma D and Max. I now understand why Ellie is so tired in the afternoons.